First World Problems in the Kitchen

Cooking in other people's kitchens is always hard*. You don't know where the measuring spoons are*, the controls on the stove are different*, and before you know it you're wandering all over the place looking for the sugar, only to find it was right where you were a few minutes ago*. Such was the case this winter break, when my sister and I decided to bake while we were staying at my grandmother's house.

The first challenge was finding a recipe*. We knew there weren't a whole lot of ingredients on hand*, and neither of us relished the idea of driving to a grocery store when it was cold and dark and the car was already in the garage*. We also weren't sure which oven we were supposed to use, the normal sized one on the right or the tiny one on the left, so a no-bake recipe would be preferential*. Finally, I had a hankering for fudge, but as we didn't have any sweetened condensed milk, that was out of the question*. Thus, my sister and I had to find a no-bake fudge-like recipe for which we had all of the ingredients. It was quite a tall order, but after searching through a few unfamiliar cookbooks, we found the perfect thing--chocolate caramel.

Our lovely recipe (sorry it's sideways)

We cheerily set to work, with the thought of warm gooey caramel melting in our mouths spurring us onward. Our candy-making fest soon screeched to a halt, however, as we regarded the nearly empty molasses bottle sitting on the shelf*. The recipe called for a cup and a half of molasses; I optimistically thought that we could get half of that. Not so--as the last drips fell out of the bottle, the unyielding measuring cup displayed barely one fourth cup of molasses.

Struggles

We were undeterred. Inwardly (actually quite vocally) groaning about the amount of math involved, we faced the grim reality that we would have to divide the amount every ingredient by six*. Our one break was the fact that my grandmother had a baby pan that was pretty close to one sixth of a nine by nine pan. Besides, we had bought cute little baby flour sacks at Wal-Mart (they were out of the regular sized ones*), so that fit rather well with the whole "baby" theme.

Baby pan

Baby flour

Fig. 4: A square of chocolate

Things went smoothly for a while. We combined the ingredients and boiled them on the stove. I burned my hand because the goo was so hot*, but all in all it was going quite well. Of course, we didn't have any chocolate squares*, so my sister and I guessed what a square of chocolate would look like. See figure four. Just kidding, we actually added a generous handful of chocolate to the caramel goo.

Then, I glanced at the recipe, which instructed us to place some of the caramel goo in a cup of cold water until it formed a medium-hard ball. What the heck comprises a medium-hard ball? I had read something on the internet about candy making a few years ago, so I knew that there were various stages of melted candy--the soft ball stage, etc. Otherwise, though, neither of us had any idea what we were doing. Moaning about the complicated nature of this innocent-looking recipe* (and the fact that my grandmother didn't have a candy thermometer to stick in the pot*), I begrudgingly filled up a cup of water and my sister dripped a little caramel into it. It looked like...I won't go there*. It was gross, though. I stuck my finger into the offending lump of caramel, now sitting at the bottom of ice cold water*, and determined that it was not ready yet. So, we repeated the distasteful process*.

Eventually, the caramel was at the "medium-hard ball stage," whatever that is, so we dumped it into our greased baby pan and let it set, deciding to rid our thoughts of the whole experience by watching a certain chick flick with baby Lindsay Lohan in it (keeping with our "baby" theme).

Caramel! We added more chocolate on top since the recipe wasn't chocolatey enough*

Looking back on the caramel-making escapade, I portrayed it as nothing but a big collection of first-world problems. I could have just written "I wanted to make caramel. Approximately twenty first world problems (marked with an asterisk, for your viewing pleasure) later, it was done." I mean, really? There I was, in a nice warm house, spending time with my sister, on vacation, and I'm whining about dividing three tablespoons of flour by six?

So, although Thanksgiving is long gone and Christmas and New Years are past us, perhaps we should all take a moment to be thankful for what we do have. For example, if your reading this right now, you have internet acess, you're probably inside, and you probably aren't cold--all things to be happy about. Now, if only my laptop cable could reach the outlet.